William Hughes

ICE signing bonuses are UBI for guys who've gotten their photos put up behind the counter at at least three bikini coffee stands.

Haha, no, I wasn't laughing at you, I was thinking about a parody version of Master Of Puppets where they go "Obey! Your! Pastor!" What's that? An ass-kicking, regardless? Right you are, guv'nor, no protest from me

I don't think the game puts its very best foot forward with its verbal comedy but the timing on how it deploys stuff is so good so often.

Twitch Twitch is the world

There's a bit I wrote about in Baby Steps where the game basically dares you to step off a ledge that will lose a LOT of progress and I previously wrote about the dignity of not giving in to it but it turns out that being a nihilism pervert is also p. good. www.twitch.tv/plumberduck/...

Streaming tonight at 8 p.m. I know last night I said I would actually progress in Baby Steps but then we started late and I saw a cardboard box on top of a ladder so I had to spend three hours getting THAT but now we're going to progress

Pinkwater wrote weird books about weird children for weird children and I devoured those suckers.

Fingers crossed that Dwayne Johnson and Benny Safdie's Lizard Music adaptation is a huge hit and spawns a whole Daniel Pinkwater extended universe. Can't wait for Snarkout Boys And The Avocado Of Death as their version of The Avengers

I try not to write too many things that are JUST dunks on societal bad actors but, like, sometimes the spirit of the dunk moves ya

if you’re a visual learner i made you some maps of where the people quoted in this article as supporting portland being occupied by troops live

Wrote about the entertainment industry trades trying to will this nonsense into existence

You're also going to run into the fact that you automatically recruit a couple of characters who are just mechanically better than generics, and you're never going to field more than 5 people in a fight, so unless you just want to play with more classes there aren't a lot of reasons to go deep.

BARGING IN you only need one squad but you should recruit a bunch of scrubs to do errands

Either die a hero or live long enough to become The Grink

Even 20 years ago, the mention of the word "cookies" meant you were probably going to at least see come cookies. Today, though...?

It's a good game, Rodrigo. Good things happen in it.

Twitch Twitch is the world

In which @plumberduck.bsky.social unlocks a powerful new speedrun technique:

I am creeping steadily closer to the absolutely deranged position of naming Baby Steps my GOTY

Partly it was probably just a result of me playing the PSX version when I was 13, but in my memory his rebuttals to the many villain speeches he gets over the course of the game were a lot less eloquent. His motivations also felt a lot more stock, "Gotta save my sister!" stuff.

Fairly? It has some really infamous difficulty spikes, and it's not great about explaining a couple of its mechanics. (Notably, some esoteric stuff regarding how accuracy works for spells.) Finding effective character builds is really fun, but making and testing them involves some grind.

Meanwhile, Delita Heiral is essentially unique as a character for this franchise. He'd be the "villain" in a less confident work, but he's written with too much intelligence to fall victim to any of those tropes. Reads like "stock anime rival," acts like Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish.

Among other things, The Ivalice Chronicles was my first time with the War Of The Lions script, and I really appreciate how it treats Ramza Beoulve. In my memories, he was kind of a Shonen protagonist dumped into the middle of Game Of Thrones, but the dignity of his conviction is so much better here.

A little late to the party but I wrote about how Final Fantasy Tactics remains pretty close to the perfect game: Somehow one of the most enjoyable RPG grinds of all time, while being married to a story that Final Fantasy, as a whole, has never really come close to topping.

I deleted that joke because although it was totally benign it was too easy to imagine it as a screenshot on Twitter

Twitch Twitch is the world

www.twitch.tv/plumberduck/...

Haha after posting this I streamed for 3.75 hours

Sorry, folks, have to cancel tonight. Back tomorrow

Streaming tonight at 8 p.m. We're having too much fun with Baby Steps so we will continue to have too much fun with Baby Steps. I promise to not get distracted this time and make actual progress, unless I see something distracting, in which case we're probably fucked

Hades II is a reminder that sometimes repetition is just more of what's great Hades II is a reminder that sometimes repetition is just more of what's great

Put some thoughts together on Hades II, and why the roguelike genre still works - when you care enough to MAKE it work. www.avclub.com/game-theory-...

(That being said, grab the full skill tree then switch them to a class with better speed - White Mage is good. And pay attention to your Magic Attack stat with equipment - a few extra points there can pay huge dividends in how much damage spells do.)

My one genuine Final Fantasy Tactics tip is to not be afraid of Calculators/Arithmatickers. Yes, it can be complicated. Yes, you'll end up nuking your own guys every now and again. But MP-less, instant Holy, Arise, or Flare anywhere you want on the battlefield is so worth it.